SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - Five people aboard a single-engine plane died when the aircraft crashed in rural southeast Georgia, scattering debris across a wooded area a few miles from the local airport, authorities said Thursday.

"We don't have an intact plane," said Vic Peacock, the Bacon County coroner, who estimated pieces of the airplane were flung across an area of pine forest about 300 feet in diameter. "There's wreckage everywhere in this small area. It just disintegrated, basically."

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Peacock said four men and a woman, most of them friends since high school, were killed in the crash a few miles outside Alma, a rural city about 100 miles southwest of Savannah.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane, a single-engine RV-10, crashed Wednesday about 4 miles east of the small Bacon County Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the cause of the crash.

Authorities believe the plane went down shortly after taking off from the local airport Wednesday between 2:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., Peacock said. It was more than 12 hours before the wreckage was discovered.

The coroner identified the owner of the plane as 38-year-old Waylon Boatright of Alma. Boatright was among the dead, Peacock said, but it had not been determined if he was the pilot.

Also killed were Drayden Sears, 24; Logan Tomberlin, 23; Ethan Hampton, 23; and Angel Wade, 20. All were from Alma.

"They were just all friends," Peacock said. "A lot of them were classmates in school."

Bacon County Sheriff Richard Foskey did not immediately return a phone call Thursday morning. His office said he was still at the crash site.

The website for manufacturer Van's Aircraft describes the RV-10 as a homebuilt, four-seat airplane sold in a kit.

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